


Albatross

by Spylace



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Undertones, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not What It Looks Like, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 19:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11297400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: After DC, Bucky doesn't go to ground. He doesn't go back to Steve either. He wants revenge against Hydra even if it means delving into the nightmare they made him.





	Albatross

**Author's Note:**

> This is a play on the dom/sub trope. 
> 
> What you need to know: No one is designated a dom or a sub. They can be either or. Whoever establishes dominance in a relationship is the dominant. Kind of like the real world. Huh.
> 
> Also.
> 
> Dear Self, stop creating WIPs.

His name is James Buchanan Barnes. He was a sergeant in the 107th Infantry Regiment during World War II. A childhood best friend of Steve Rogers before that.

He is a soldier, a hero, a patriot though the talking heads on TV are now lobbying words like traitor, murderer, a commie or victim.

His fist unclenches, ribs loosen and the oxygen that floods his lungs is all the sweeter when he sees that Steve lives. He’s fine, he’s going to be fine—he’s getting better and the bartender throws him out with a squinty-eyed look when the glass shatters in his hand. He’s got beer all over the counter, what a waste, and he scrambles to blot the stains in his borrowed jeans when it occurs to him that why does it matter?

Outside, he is free. That’s what this is isn’t it? He should be glad. Steve came for him after all.

He throws up in the nearest trash can.

 

He threw up after the museum too.

 

He robs a bank. It’s not a spur-of-the-moment thing.

A plan is born inside his head, half-formed and ugly with grief. The years in the chair burned out more than memories. It burned out the words like turpentine on jelly and probably his soul.

A part of him remembers that the Americans, the American branch of Hydra, didn’t want no stinkin’ commie fingerprints on their brand new toy. Tentatively, he tests out the word ‘freight car’ in his mouth and physically recoils.

The word still hurts. His spine is taut with anticipation. But he no longer feels the liquidizing pain in his brain stem where the metal prongs had been planted to bring a thousand volts to his brain.

He seethes when he thinks what Hydra has taken from him, what Hydra must have taken from him.

He can’t go back to Steve— _he won’t_. Revenge is the next best thing but he can’t do it alone.

Hence the money, the bank, the false ID and the whole nine yards. He could hoof it to Russia. _Has_ hoofed it to Russia before and doesn’t care to repeat.

He cuts his hair. He showers. He shaves.

He smashes his fist (the fleshy one, not the metal because that would be logical and _safe_ ) in the mirror and his skin heals over the cuts and the glass because it takes him three-days to snap out of his funk and by that point, he has to slice his palms open to scrape ground glass from his joints.

When he’s done, he feels more like himself ( ~~like Bucky Barnes~~ ) in years.

People stare not because he has a fugitive’s face but because of the cut of his suit and the span of his back. It puts a little bounce in his steps knowing that he could bring a stranger to their knees and he doesn’t have to lift a finger.

Dominants growl when their submissives stray. Those ones are idiots. They think that they can take him because they’re bigger, maybe even meaner. But the joke’s on them because he’s the meanest sumbitch on this block with a chip on his shoulder the size of the goddamned planet.

It’s instinct. Even a self-professed alpha male would have a hard time getting up from their knees.

He lets them off with a flash of teeth. He’s got bigger fish to fry.

 

The flight to Moscow takes fourteen hours via layover in Newark. From there, it’s five hours to Yamelyanovo International Airport. He doesn’t sleep a wink.

When he finally gets to the place he was kept as the Winter Soldier, he’s been awake roughly seventy-three hours. The first thing he does is park the jeep against a hilly incline and sleeps. His dreams are confusing and he pays them no mind. If his hand shakes a little as he pulls on the car door, there’s no one around to mention it.

It’s a peaceful place. His former cage is a forgotten place. The doors groan when they are pulled. The air on his tongue is stale. It tells him that no one’s been here in a while. In fact, he’s not sure if any of the others are alive.

But he’s come to bury the past. His feet stirs up dust on the floor and he coughs wet into the shoulder of his parka.

The generators are working at least.

The lights flicker on piss yellow and he hears a couple of the bulbs go around the ceiling leaving patches of the room in complete darkness.

He doesn’t go to the soldiers immediately. He puts it off by poking around.

Time has not been kind to this place.

In the control room, he finds rows and rows of drawers emptied in haste. He peels a page from file to have it disintegrate in his hands. There are stacks of old video tapes with dates on them written in a neat hand. He picks up the one labeled ’12-16-1991’ and turns it over.

The plastic is cracked. He considers for one moment that he should take it with him.

The thought passes. He lets the tape drop. It clatters on the ground and breaks into pieces. The film spills out but it doesn’t matter. He knows what’s in them.

It’s why he can’t go home again.

 

Josef, Tatiana, Wei, Christopher and Danny are all asleep in their metal berths and the relief he feels is tangible like a kick in the back of his teeth.

He’d expected them to be dead or even missing. For all five Winter Soldiers to be here, in stasis, is nothing short of troubling.

It means they couldn’t be controlled.

He wakes Danny up first, the youngest, the baby of their murderous little pack. Relief lightens the smooth face when Danny’s eyes fall on him.

“Zima.” He breathes. An old nickname. Their handlers would have punished him for sentimentality. Have punished him for it before.

“Danny.”

The man flinches at his cool tone and immediately drops to his knees in supplication. The impact makes his teeth chatter and he makes Danny sit there when it’s obvious to all the world that the man wants a taste, a touch, a whiff or a kind word now that he’s awake.

He moves on. He wakes them up in order. Christopher, Wei, Tatiana who stares at him with a sort of caution that makes him waver.

Josef, he lets out last.

 

After the incident, they don’t let him and Josef out on the field together. He’s gone on several missions with Tatiana, Wei, Christopher and Danny but never with Josef. The last time he’d seen the other man was when he was signed over to the US and Danny had howled from the loss.

In the present, Danny’s red-rimmed eyes flicker from him to Josef. They all submit beautifully to him. All except Josef.

“You,” Josef blinks the frost from his eyes. “You came back.”

“I did.” He replies indifferent.

Josef gets close enough to huff him. Real close, beyond his comfort zone, sharing air.

He smells stale sweat, metal and impurities. A corner of his lips quirk up. Hydra could not control Josef at all when he left.

“Submit.” Josef growls.

He could have heard a pin drop in the cavernous bunker. The word charges the air with electricity. Danny lets out a whimper to which Tatiana barks in rebuke.

“No.”

Josef thrusts his chin out, his chest swelling in a show of dominance.

Josef is warm. Fresh out of his icy coffin and he is so warm.

“I beat you.” Josef challenges.

Bucky considers this.

“You took down a half-starved man only after he wiped the floor with the rest of your team. Should I submit to them as well?”

Shock ripples throughout the circle. Wrong-footed, Josef twists his face into an ugly grimace. Conflicted, repulsed even at the thought of him going soft and limp for Tatiana, Wei, Christopher or even Danny.

He purrs. “Should I submit for everyone who’s had a hand in making you?” Faces flicker behind his eyes. Faster than memory. Almost instinct. “Yulov? Kudrin? Karpov?”

“No! Not him!” Josef snarls though they don’t touch. He leans away after every word as though afraid of what might happen if they did.

He was their alpha; Josef could never presume.

Even now, the others were gathering behind him. Danny, Christopher, Wei and even Tatiana.

“You want me to submit Josef? Prove it. Let’s dance.”

 

He didn’t come unprepared. Josef is stiff, uncoordinated after decades in cyrostasis while Bucky’s had a thousand volts to his brain.

Josef bellows in frustration. It’s always been his weakness.

But Josef is also very strong. What few blows that do land knock the air from his chest. The light in the room has cast a golden halo around his head and for a brief moment, Bucky sees Steve. The hesitation costs him.

Unacceptable.

He spits blood off to the side and hooks his foot around the other man’s knee.

Josef stumbles and Bucky throws him on the ground. Smashes a fist in the temples and Josef knocks his head against the hard concrete, even as metal fingers wrap around the back of his neck.

“Submit.” He says quietly.

“No.” Josef bites out. The plates in his arms shift, grinding down. It still feels off. But it’s good that it does. It matches the rest of him. Josef strains his neck.

“I said, _submit_.”

The fight goes out of him.

The others breathe a sigh of relief.

These are not the highly-trained Hydra loyalists he was given. Their world changed the moment they were assigned to him. Hydra had only began to guess at the shift in dynamic when his words did what the shock sticks and rubber bullets could not.

Bucky does not forget that these men and woman, Danny, Christopher, Wei, Tatiana, and Josef chose Hydra.

But sometimes, he remembers that they were a team. He needs a team.

He’s inherited a barrel of sharks, all teeth and instinct.

It’s a good thing that’s exactly what he needs.

He lets Josef go.

“What now?” Josef asks, surly in defeat.

Relaxing, the others wander though not far. Tethered to him by something even science can’t explain.

He offers Josef a hand.

“We have a mission.”


End file.
